Praise for The Beast God Forgot to Invent

“[These novellas] prove again that Harrison is our greatest non-writerly writer.” —Newsweek

“Three novellas, inhabited by the tough guys Harrison’s reader’s have learned to love and dread; but now they are older and more ruminative, aware of their mortality and half supposing that the right woman might save them. . . . What wins you over . . . is the big, wet, sloppy kiss Harrison continues to plant on the face of life itself.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Rich and exuberant . . . extraordinary . . . Reading Jim Harrison is about as close as one can come in contemporary fiction to experiencing the abundant pleasures of living.” —The Boston Globe

“Harrison has quietly established one of the deeper canons in modern American letters. The Beast God Forgot to Invent is a sparkling addition to its ranks.” —Denver Post

“The Beast God Forgot to Invent is a proud addition to the Harrison oeuvre. It is exhilarating to watch a master at work.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“One of our finest living writers.” —Dallas Morning News

“If the American male at the turn of the millennium has a voice, it is that of Jim Harrison. . . . There seems no doubt that his work will endure.” —Austin American-Statesman

“Three novellas . . . find the Michigan poet and novelist in his best form.” —The Detroit Free Press

“Jim Harrison is a writer of expansive appetite . . . ranging hungrily through genres like a vagrant at a wedding feast. . . . Now he’s back with a collection of three novellas, and Harrison has proven himself a master of this quirky literary form, combining a poetic playfulness with language with his audacious storyteller’s wit.” —The Seattle Times

“[Harrison’s] stories trip people—particularly men—to their intoxicating animal essence. . . . The Beast God Forgot to Invent is pure Harrison, a bone-jarring gallop over the landscape of masculinity.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Imbued with all the gravely melancholy of a Tom Waits ballad . . . prickly, coarse, and utterly lovable . . . Harrison has been prowling the literary edges for four decades now, stubbornly eluding the snares of critical reduction—including such dim taggings as ‘macho’ and ‘regional’—while producing a body of work so lushly idiosyncratic as to thwart even the gentlest efforts at classification. . . . With the publication of The Beast God Forgot to Invent, [Harrison’s earlier works] gain dazzling new company.” —Salon

“The magic of writing as good as Harrison’s is that it can bridge the gulf of human separation. This collection is saturated with delightful, energetic voices; rich with the captured turns of lively human thought, careening from trenchant humor, ranchy longings, ironic japes and philosophical questing. The total effect is an invigorating and provoking embrace of human contradictions.” —The Oregonian

“Harrison is a master. . . . Rejuvenation is often within grasp if we strive for it wholeheartedly enough, is Harrison’s theme here. He demonstrates it soundly with richly conceived characters whose intellectual perspectives, etched with wit and wisdom, propel their often bold actions.” —Santa Fe New Mexican

“Packed with familiar Harrisonian elements: strange and bold characters, good eats, and carnal desire.” —Outside

“Classic Harrison, rich with human insight, littered with references to Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky and D.H. Lawrence and focused on familiar themes of aging and regret.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Habitat suitable for living a full and natural life is . . . what we are all looking for. The tales that constitute The Beast God Forgot to Invent successfully couch that search in Jim Harrison’s unique and highly imaginative world.” —The Bloomsbury Review

“Tightly focused gems . . . As [a character] tells us around midnight in Paris, ‘I didn’t expect, after all, to become one of those men who could enter a bar, throw his hat, and hit the hat rack every time. As a matter of fact there are no more hats and hat racks.’ I’m not so sure. Jim Harrison hits the hat rack three for three with The Beast God Forgot to Invent.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Harrison’s fourth volume of novellas takes hold of you through the sweetly intoxicating influence and power of his narrative voices.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Harrison’s intricate symbolism and scathing observations of urban foibles, his sly humor and vibrant language remind readers that he is one of our most talented chroniclers of the masculine psyche, intellectual or not.” —Publishers Weekly